What About Firefox 52.9.0 (32-bit) ESR?
There are still thousands of innocent Firefox 52.9.0 (32-bit) ESR users who are still left hanging in the wind. Some of us simply cannot afford to run out and buy a new computer because you guys rolled out an errant hotfix.
Please folks, be fair and do the right thing. If I were able to replace this old Vista machine, I would. But the simple fact is, those of us living on a fixed income shouldn't have to suffer financially for the keystrokes of errant progress.
You see, for us, the few worldwide still on Firefox 52.9.0 (32-bit) ESR, without the use of add-on's such as UBO and ABP, we simply can no longer use this browser to browse the Internet due to the massive number of ads from page to page. And while Opera does afford some internal relief, nothing works as well as my trusty old FF 52 with uBlock Origin in place which allows an hour of smooth use before needing to restart.
Please folks, do the right thing for us. This current state is nothing short of a true and realistic hardship for many of us who simply aren't able to update at the current time - or even at all, for that matter.
Firefox 52.9.0 (32-bit) ESR users need you. Don't throw us away.
All Replies (19)
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What you need is a new intermediate certificate that will allow proper add-on signature verification. Up to now, support forum volunteers have provided two methods for installing the certificate, both unofficial, listed in this thread from yesterday:
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1258165#answer-1218833
We don't know whether the certificate will be made available for download from an official site but, if it is, then you could use that link to install from.
Thank you for the speedy reply. I've read your reply a number of times throughout the last 24 hours in response to other questions. However, Mozilla says not to implement any workaround, as doing so may impede their own hotfix supposedly coming sometime soon.
So the question remains: Do something in the interim that could negatively impact an official rollout, or do nothing and wait for an official fix?
For me, as long as I know Mozilla is working on a 52.x fix, I'm content to wait.
Mozilla should do what's morally right and help us get back to where we were without our needing to fix it ourselves. And what about those of us who aren't able to even find this support site? It's unfair to those folks who have no idea what's going on and who aren't savvy enough to even find this place!
Again, I appreciate your assistance, however this shouldn't be an end user workaround. It should be a hotfix from Mozilla post haste.
Mozilla has not provided any minor updates for the old EOL Firefox 52 ESR since the 52.9.0esr was Released back on June 26, 2018.
However since many are still using it for the EOL WinXP and Vista it might be possible that they could have an update like say 52.9.1 esr.
Fx 52 ESR mainly used Legacy extensions that is not supported by fx 57.0 and later however.
Besides using Windows 7 or later, dual booting with a light 32-bit Linux distro with a light desktop like Xfce will allow you to use current versions of Firefox.
Modified by James
Here in support, we can assist with features, settings, and workarounds, but we don't set policy.
You could submit comments and suggestions and plead your case through one or more of the following links, or recently I saw someone created a Change.org petition (no idea whether that helps):
- Feedback: https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/
- Discourse: https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/firefox-development
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/firefox
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Firefox
James, thank you for your suggestions, however two important facts to consider:
1) Older systems such as my own cannot run Win7 but even if I could, it's still an unfair forced expense in buying the upgrade. Even so, a Win7 disk can only be obtained third party now. Not something most of us would do since there's no guarantee it will even run or accept a new license.
2) This isn't considered an "update" it's considered a "repair". My browser has been working fine until yesterday when this hotfix affected ESR browsers. Since the push affected 52.x, it was an error from the start, as it shouldn't have affected us at all, since as you stated, we haven't had an official update in almost a year now.
This is a repair for us, not an update or upgrade. We just want them to fix what they broke. That's all.
I will look into the feedback section, thank you. However, I'm not into all this social media nonsense and as such, do not have accounts there. But thank you just the same.
I thought this was an official support forum. I guess not.
OnThePike said
My browser has been working fine until yesterday when this hotfix affected ESR browsers. Since the push affected 52.x, it was an error from the start, as it shouldn't have affected us at all, since as you stated, we haven't had an official update in almost a year now.
That is not correct.
The hotfix was not pushed out to Firefox 52 ESR users because the Shield Studies feature did not exist in Firefox 52 ESR.
Even if you were to manually downloaded the hotfix extension and install it in Firefox 52 ESR, it dies on the first line because is not compatible with Firefox 52 ESR. Therefore, it makes no changes (which is too bad, because it would be very helpful if it did).
What happened to your Firefox was what happened to all versions of Firefox. A critical certificate expired, and the first time after midnight May 4th UTC that your Firefox went to re-verify extensions, it declared most or all of them to be unverifiable.
The fix for all versions of Firefox is to install an updated certificate. The question is how users of old versions of Firefox will get that.
OnThePike said
I thought this was an official support forum. I guess not.
It is official in that it is hosted and monitored by Mozilla, but it's for support only, not decisions about what kinds of patches to release.
By the way, I'm not saying that letting a certificate expire is not a major, major blunder and a gigantic pain in the rear, including for those of us trying to help other users. That should not have happened. But from the support perspective, I think you've seen pretty much everything we have to offer.
There might be fix coming this Monday for older Firefox versions.
On this page alone, a whopping 6 out of 20 posts are from 52.x users and an additional 2 from 56.x users. That's EIGHT of TWENTY!!
Almost HALF your users!
We are not a SMALL group here. And we deserve a repair.
Okay, so I tried helping other 52.x ESR users having this problem by posting:
Go to about:config Search for xpinstall.signatures.require Double click it to set to false. Wait a few seconds. Your add-on's should come back to life My issue was somewhat resolved using xpinstall.signatures.require = true and setting it to false. However, now that the disabled add-on's are re-enabled, each of them is highlighted in yellow with an unsupported notification.
But I seem to be getting bitch-slapped in every attempt. Therefore I'll just stick to my own post and try to help myself.
So yes, in doing such it can allow potentially malicious add-on's, etc however I've turned off automatic updates for Add On's years ago so that's not an issue for me.
I also mentioned this isn't a fix. That has to come from Mozilla. It does, however, allow all my disabled addons to be used exactly as they were before this certificate madness last night. The issue now is these now-working addons are highlighted in yellow as unsupported. Mozilla needs to roll out a certificate for us to eliminate those messages, but in the interim, all previously disabled addons now work as they had before.
Edited to include image and blockquote tag to make it easier to read
Modified by OnThePike
Hi OnThePike, sorry about posting those follow-ons without asking you to do it. Since people may change a setting immediately and tune out, it seemed best to create a new post right away.
I also wanted to reply to posters who used a 50-something version that isn't an ESR that the preference won't work for them. Next to each question is a section called Question Details which should help you spot those cases.
Hi guys,
I was using Firefox 52.5.2 ESR because I need to use Silverlight. Because of the whole certificate issue I can no longer get on Firefox using that version. Any idea what I can do ?
Latest 52 ESR is 52.9.0.
The developers appear close to releasing an extension to add the necessary new certificate to Firefox 52-59, and to Firefox 60 non-ESR.
It is probably already active. I tested the extension with 52.9.0 ESR and see the certificate in the Certificate Manager. The fix is for Firefox 52-60, so older version would still require a manual install.
Hi folks,
Thanks for the follow-up. I have been watching the developments over at Bugzilla for the last 2 days so I knew they were working hard on the issue. I have not yet applied the hot-fix. I usually wait a week before doing so. It appears the only bug for us at the moment is a Baidu search engine add-on incompatibility (or some such - I don't use it so I'm not all that interested.)
I'll follow-up and close the request after everyone else jumps in and gives the all-clear. I'm still using the temporary workaround via xpinstall.signatures.require = false, so once I decide to apply the fix, I'll need also reset that to false I guess. Maybe I'll just leave it as-is. Yes, I know.
Will update in a few days. Thanks again.